Montreal Canadiens Joël Teasdale is on the path to win a Memorial Cup

The 2019 Memorial Cup final is here, and Montreal Canadiens prospect Joël Teasdale and the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies need only one win to be named champions.

Life has a strange way of repeating itself. The Rouyn-Noranda Huskies defeated the Halifax Mooseheads with a 4-0 victory in Game 6 of the QMJHL playoffs to win the President’s Cup. Montreal Canadiens prospect Joël Teasdale didn’t have a point in the final victory, but he ended up leading all players in scoring with 14 goals and 20 assists in 20 games.

With the 2019 Memorial Cup reaching its final match, CHL fans have the exact same headline to watch.

The Mooseheads already knew they were heading to the Memorial Cup as they were named the host team for the tournament. However, the team had a solid regular season anyway and made it to the President Cup final.

The Huskies dominated the QMJHL this season leading the entire league with 119 points. But the team knew they needed more as they added Noah Dobson from the Acadia-Bathurst Titan for three first-round picks and a second-round and Habs prospect Joël Teasdale from the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada for Maximillien Ledoux a first (2021), third (2019), and three fourths.

Regardless of who wins, the QMJHL will lift the Memorial Cup for the second year in a row, the only question now is, who is the team to do it?

Halifax started the tournament off strong with a 4-1 win over the WHL Champion Prince Albert Raiders. Rouyn-Noranda stumbled out of the gate losing to the Guelph Storm 5-2 but won their remaining two games to qualify for a spot.

The Mooseheads Round Robin success sent them to the Memorial Cup final automatically whereas the Huskies needed to redeem themselves against Guelph in the semi-finals.

Both teams met each other before in a tight game with Teasdale’s squad getting the last celebration. Teasdale scored the second goal of the night heading into a final 4-3 decision that allowed the Huskies to advance to the playoff round of the tournament.

This will be the final decision of the Memorial Cup. On one side, there’s an opportunity to prove again who is the stronger force out of the QMJHL while for the other, it’s a shot at redemption. It’s moments like these where top players must be your top players, and the Huskies and Mooseheads have a number of those within their roster.

One of the few tipping points, however, will be goaltending as Halifax’s Alexis Gravel has been shutting things down since the beginning of the tournament with his .929 save percentage. Samuel Harvey is doing his part as well but has the inferior stat line with a .882.

Another area for the Huskies to focus on is their power play. They head into this game with the best in the Memorial Cup firing at 25%. When you zoom out a bit and consider the team only has two power play goals (Teasdale has one of them) on eight opportunities, it doesn’t look as menacing. But each of those tallies has come at important points of the game leading to victories in the end.

Teasdale’s man-advantage goal against the Raiders tied the game up at the end of the first period giving the Huskies the spark to come out swinging in the second. Alex Beaucage’s goal against the Storm was the first of the game getting things rolling for Rouyn-Noranda.

It’ll be an exciting match between the Mooseheads and the Huskies and even though the development Joël Teasdale would get by winning is second to none for the Montreal Canadiens, the moment of being there is even better.